Improving Private Renting

LSE London’s 2017 Lent term seminar series begins on the 16th of January. Speakers from within and beyond LSE will focus on London’s current economic and political environment London, covering relevant issues such as London’s planning strategy, Brexit, gender, urban space, and right to the everyday life, West London corridor, suburban gentrification, TFL crossrail, and the Outer London Commission. Presenters include academics and practitioners from relevant fields. Each seminar is… Read More

We understand that the UK needs to increase housing supply from around 200,000 net additions to 300,000 homes per year to identify housing needs of 1.5m homes in the next five years (see our previous report with the Town & Country Planning Association). We have identified Build to Rent (BTR) as a model that can help address and meet these goals (see our previous report with Future of London). The task before… Read More

London has a chronic housing problem. The private and public sector seem to be experimenting with Build to Rent model as one of the many ways to tackle this problem. In this report, Future of London and LSE London set forth definitions, motivations, contemporary context, challenges, reasons for the public sector to promote the model, and recommendations for the various stake holders. The report acknowledges two leading definitions from the Greater London… Read More

Kath Scanlon and Christine Whitehead have conducted the largest ever survey of UK landlords in a report commissioned by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. In their report, they find significant findings on landlords’ profile, motivations, and plans. The report outlines how many landlords have mortgages, how many properties they own, how old they are, typical profile, and overall plans. About 2500 landlords were surveyed, of which 49% respondents reported owning their property… Read More

Kath Scanlon presented at the Sunday Business Post Residential Property Summit, which took place in Radisson BLU Royal on Golden Lane, Dublin on Tuesday, December 6th. Kath has studied housing markets and policy in several EU countries and the US and has advised government departments, international organisations and development banks. She has written extensively about Britain’s private rented sector and the role of new corporate landlords. In this presentation, Kath explores questions… Read More

On Thursday, 1 December 2016, LSE London launched the final report and recommendations on how to accelerate the supply of new housing in London. This was a culmination of discussions with specialists from central government, the GLA, and London boroughs together with a small number of other key actors from industry and academia. This event followed up on our interim report we published in June 2016, taking full account of changing political… Read More

The Social Mobility Commission published their annual report on the problem of social mobility in Britain. This year they placed strong emphasis on new evidence that suggests that for young people obstacles for social mobility are getting worse not better. The evidence they provide highlights four key areas that negatively affect the poor, low-and middle-income families and communities in England: a discriminatory education system, a two-tier labour market, an imbalanced economy, and… Read More

The Mayor of London commissioned LSE London research on housing density. This research data is meant to aid in the development of policies and preparation of the London Plan. Links to all of the reports can be found here. LSE London’s Christine Whitehead, Alan Mace, and Ian Gordon wrote two out of the the five reports. The first report titled, ‘Defining, measuring and implementing density standards in London’ (London Plan Density Research… Read More

New research published today suggests that it is economic pressures rather than government policies which have been most important in changing the role of private renting across Europe. The research, undertaken by LSE London with the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research and experts from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands found that demand for private renting is growing for four main reasons. First, in many places it has become harder to… Read More

Prof Christine Whitehead gave one of the keynote speeches at The American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA) 2016 annual international conference held in Alicante, Spain. Christine’s presentation, titled ‘Is Social and Affordable Housing in Jeopardy?’ dealt with the questions of why social and affordable housing matter, the different definitions and practices across Europe over time, and a historical overview of financing models in Europe and in the UK. She also… Read More